It appears that numerous sunken reefs, well known to navigators, have, within the last two centuries, become visible above water; that many ancient ports have become inland towns; that many small islands have become united to one another and to the mainland by grassy plains; that rocky points which in former times just peeped above the water, and afforded refuge only to a solitary sea-bird, are now grown into little islets; and that several of the old fishing grounds are now deserted for their shallowness, nay, in some cases, altogether dried up. From these facts the inference is plain; either the solid Crust of the Earth has been uplifted, or the waters of the sea have subsided. Now it is certain there has been no subsidence of the sea; for such a subsidence, as we before observed, if it took place at all, should have been general; whereas there are many points on the shores of the Baltic, especially along the coasts of Denmark and Prussia, where it can be proved that no change of level has taken place for centuries. And therefore the phenomena above described we must attribute to an upheaval of the Earth’s Crust.[103] Such is the kind of reasoning with which this inquiry has been pursued; and it may now be set down as a received and established fact, that a slow and gradual process of upheaval is going on, at the present day, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, at the rate of from two to four feet in a century; and this is over an area of unknown breadth, and not less than 1000 miles in length. Evidence of a similar kind has lately been adduced to prove that the west coast of Greenland is just now gradually subsiding for a space of more than 600 miles from north to south. “Ancient buildings on low, rocky islands, and on the shore of the mainland, have been gradually submerged, and experience has taught the aboriginal Greenlander never to build his hut near the water’s edge. In one case the Moravian settlers have been obliged more than once to move the poles upon which their large boats were set, and the old poles still remain beneath the water as silent witnesses of the change.”[104]